Page 17 of The Perfect Poise

“That must have been frustrating,” she continued blandly, as if she didn’t know that she was stirring the pot.

“Why do you say that?” he asked, clearly trying not to sound irritated.

“Well, we checked your finances on the way over here,” she told him. “You make a really good living. Ninety-five percent of the population would envy you. But it’s not really in Chloe Baptiste’s universe, is it? I mean, you’re not one of those ultra-high-net-worth people like her.”

“What’s your point?”

“I guess I’m just wondering if it got frustrating to know that if she showed up at an auction, you’d never be able to outbid her on a piece that she cared about.”

She watched him quietly seethe and imagined what a man like that would do if he was angry and had access to a sharp knife.

“I never thought about it that way,” he insisted. “Tastes differ. We didn’t always bid on the same pieces.”

Jessie smiled politely, as if that answer was satisfactory. Then she went in for the kill.

“But you really wanted that piece last night, didn’t you?”

Leach stared at her for several seconds without replying. When he finally did, his tone was guarded.

“I feel like I’m being interrogated here. Am I a suspect in Chloe’s murder?”

“We’re just being thorough, Dr. Leach,” Ryan said dismissively, as if the man was being dramatic to even ask the question. “Didn’t you think we’d pursue all angles with everyone at the auction last night? But as long as you bring it up, maybe you can tell us where you were last night right after auction ended at 9 p.m. We didn’t see you leave on the gallery’s surveillance video.”

Leach's eyes narrowed, and for a moment, Jessie thought he might be about to ask for a lawyer. But then he broke into a grin that was made creepy by the lack of laugh lines on his face.

“I did leave, but I could understand why you might have missed it,” he explained. “You see, I left the event about fifteen minutes early with a female friend I met there. We really hit it off. In fact, she was being playful and put her giant derby hat on my head. I was still wearing it when we left. Just look on your video for the older guy in the navy suit and ridiculous hat walking out with the girl much too young for him. That’s me.”

Jessie did vaguely recall a couple matching that description leaving but hadn’t made the possible connection.

“So this young woman can vouch for your location after you left?” Ryan pressed.

“Yes, our location was initially my car, and when that location proved insufficient for our needs, we went to my house. Her name is Tiffany something. I have it in my phone. Just give me a minute.”

As he scrolled through his contacts, Jessie looked over at Ryan. He was clearly thinking the same thing as her. Though they couldn’t be sure yet, it was looking like Leach wasn’t their guy. That meant the murderer was still out there.

The thought gave Jessie a sudden pit in her stomach. Then she got a text from Captain Parker. Reading it, the pit only got deeper.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Hannah Dorsey walked out of her Intro to Inductive Logic class and headed to her meeting.

She was moving briskly, partly to fight off the chill in the mid-January air, but also because her meeting was at 10:15 at a coffeehouse across campus.

It was 10:05 and she had a half hour before her next class, Art in Context: History, Theory and Practice, started. The winter quarter at UC Irvine had only started a week ago and she already felt the pressure. Her current classes were more challenging than in the fall, to the point that she wondered if what she planned to do next was even a good idea.

She was already juggling so much. It was enough for most people to just navigate freshman year at a top school like UCI. But Hannah had bitten off a lot more than just that. She was also steering her way through a flirtation with Finn Anderton, a fellow freshman that she’d initially despised before her feelings had changed. Finn, a fraternity member, had been a suspect when Hannah’s friend—and now roommate—Lizzie Dempsey, was being anonymously harassed. When Hannah eventually uncovered the culprit, it turned out not to be Finn and their initial animosity had morphed into…well, she wasn’t sure quite what.

But that was the least of her challenges. Much of her winter break had been spent caring for Kat Gentry, the best friend of her older sister, Jessie. Kat’s fiancé was recently murdered, and Hannah had decided to stay at Kat’s apartment to help her through those first, difficult weeks afterward.

She didn’t mind the task. After all, she and Kat had become friends too. Last summer, Kat had invited her to be an intern of sorts at her detective agency. The two of them spent many hours in Kat’s car, surveilling people while eating crappy food and talking about everything and nothing. They’d gotten close.

So it seemed like a no-brainer to help out. She was out of school for several weeks. Jessie couldn’t crash with Kat because of her case load. So Hannah had stepped in. And it appeared to help. Even though Kat hadn’t yet resumed case work at her detective agency, she was talking more openly and getting out more often. She’d even confided to Hannah about her obsession with Ash Pierce. And at Hannah’s urging, she was going to tell Dr. Lemmon about it too.

But there was another reason Hannah had offered to help Kat, a less altruistic one. It was the same reason she was dashing across the quad right now. Hannah had an itch, and unless she got to gently massage it on occasion, it would end up throbbing to the point that she’d scratch it bloody.

The itch was her never-ending desire for vengeance, something she’d come to view as a kind of bloodlust. She suspected she’d inherited it from the serial killer father she shared with her sister. She knew that Jessie, who had admitted to similar feelings, had found a way to control them. She had turned her ferociousness into something constructive: profiling the people who harmed others and bringing them to justice.

That was harder for Hannah, who didn’t have a professional outlet for her urges. In one instance, her desire to punish wrongdoers had led her to shoot a man dead. Admittedly he was serial killer intent on harming her, Jessie, and Ryan. But he was also elderly and handcuffed at the time she’d killed him. Despite that, the act had given her thrill. And afterward, Hannah found that the incident awakened a desire to recreate that feeling. The fact that the shooting was declared self-defense by authorities only made her more brazen.

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